


el hambre y las ganas de comer

by jasondont (minigami)



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008) - All Media Types
Genre: Gen, Power Imbalance, Season/Series 07, no beta we die like etc
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-07
Updated: 2020-11-07
Packaged: 2021-03-09 00:21:40
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,469
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27425638
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/minigami/pseuds/jasondont
Summary: Rex needs to fix his bucket. Anakin offers his help.
Relationships: Anakin Skywalker & Ahsoka Tano, CT-7567 | Rex & Ahsoka Tano, CT-7567 | Rex & Anakin Skywalker
Comments: 7
Kudos: 79





	el hambre y las ganas de comer

**Author's Note:**

> the summary of this sounds like it's porn but it really isn't. this is literally two thousand words of rex managing anakin and anakin jumping over boundaries like it's an olympic sport.

Rex can feel the thrumming of the sublight engines when he steps out of his cabin, up in the officers’ deck. They are still around Yerbana, kept in orbit while the Venator is repaired--they‘ve been there for almost a week. The ship had been breached during one of the first engagements. The casualties had been horrific.  
It’s been more than two years of this, however--by now, Rex is already practised at putting their dead out of his mind. 

Or so he thought.

Coric was one of the ones who died. He was there, in one of the medbays, instead of planetside--he was promoted from field medic to medical officer a couple of months ago. He should have been safer up there than with infantry, but he wasn’t.  
He was the last to die from the squad that survived Teth with Rex. 

The only difference between day and night cycles in the ship is the quantity of personnel that one can see walking around. Rex steps out of his cabin into mostly empty hallways, wearing the lower half of his armour, his helmet under one arm, the recycled ship air dry and harsh against his blacks. He knows most nat-borns find space travel cold, but he’s always been comfortable in the controlled atmosphere of the Venators--and he knows he’s not the only one.  
Clones run hot, and they’re designed to be highly adaptable, but Rex likes to think that it’s also because he is exactly where he should be.

Or so he used to think.

He crosses paths with other officers on his way down to the hangar, and greets them with a nod of his head--the nat-borns nod at him. Most of them are human, and male, and look at him with something that’s not exactly aversion in their eyes but could be, if Rex were the kind of man who looks for trouble where there should be none.   
Because there is none. He’s General Skywalker’s second, his right hand man, even if officially he is still just the Captain of one of the companies of his legion, and they know it. 

The hangar is as busy as always--pilots don’t ever sleep, it seems, and most technicians don’t either. Rex crosses the place in the direction of the workshops. It’s slightly colder inside, like the void of space is closer, like it pushes back harder against the hull of the ship, but the place is busy, full of noise. It smells of oil and starfighter fuel and hot metal, and some part of Rex will always find those smells comfortable--they feel like home in the same way the Venator’s halls do, or the inside of a lartie, like Kamino’s white, sterile halls never did. 

Some of the technicians look at him askance when he nears the workshops, but once they see his bucket they leave him alone. One of them rolls his eyes, and points to an empty bench.  
“This one’s free, sir,” he says.   
Rex nods. He thanks him, and sets his helmet on the surface of the bench. 

The visor is loose again. He was knocked in the head by a battledroid a couple of weeks ago, and he hasn’t had time to fix it until that moment. The HUD has been acting up since then--it blacks out sometimes, and some of the commands do not respond as fast as they should.   
It should be easy to fix, and he knows he could ask one of the droids to do it for him, but Rex likes taking care of his armour on his own. He welded the Phase I visor by himself, with Commander Tano at his elbow being a smartass.

Rex closes his eyes. He breathes deep, in and out, until the feeling disappears, until he can feel the frustration, the fury at the injustice, fade away, and then grabs his bucket and turns one of the lamps.

He misses her. Everyone does, really, even the admiral, even the deck officers that at first looked at her like they couldn’t decide what was worse, the fact that she was so young, that she was female, or that she was not human. They all saw her grow up--they were all witness of her transformation from a Jedi youngling to a soldier.   
She was one of them. She was one of Rex’s, even if that idea feels vaguely heretical, like something he could get decommissioned for. He taught her how to think on her feet, how to look at the battlefield and understand how it worked, how to learn and improvise and adapt. He’s smart enough to understand he did not have to do much, actually--she was already brilliant. Even when she first joined them, fourteen and tiny, she could put them into the mats with barely any effort, and her mind was like a knife, sharp and fast. She was the best of them.

Rex blinks. Forces himself to breath in, breath out. He focuses on his bucket--the blue is looking a bit faded, he should see if there’s any paint left. 

He’s prying off the visor when he hears footsteps at his back. When he looks over his shoulder, he sees the general. He’s wearing a blanket over his shoulders and when he sees Rex, he looks at him with something very similar to guilt in his eyes.  
 _Oh boy._  
“General,” he says, because even if it’s zero dark thirty and they are supposedly off-duty, Rex was raised well.   
“Oh. Hey, Rex,” Skywalker answers. He tilts his head. He has something in his right hand. When he feels Rex’s gaze, he hides it behind the blanket. “You should be sleeping.”  
Rex raises an eyebrow. “Oh, should I, General?”  
Skywalker smiles--it changes his face, makes him look as young as he actually is.   
“You just sounded like Commander Cody, you know that, Rex?”  
“Well, sir, I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but we kind of share the same face, didn’t you know?” Rex drawls.   
Skywalker snorts inelegantly, and Rex can’t help but grin back. He feels some weight lift off from his shoulders.  
“I’m almost done with this, sir, if you need the bench,” he says. 

There’s room enough for both of them, but Skywalker is clearly hiding something. And Rex knows him, knows that he will go ahead and act as if it’s nothing, as if he were not feeling uncomfortable, so Rex gives him an out.  
He expects the general to take it.

Skywalker sighs. For a beat, Rex is sure he’s going to say yes, and prepares to rush the rest of the repairs. But then the general shakes his head.  
“It’s fine, Rex. Don’t worry,” he says. He smirks. “I don’t mind sharing if you don’t.”  
Rex manages not to roll his eyes, but just barely. He nods towards the bench.   
“Go ahead, then, sir.”   
Skywalker crosses the distance with one, long step, and comes to stand next to Rex; his scratchy blanket brushes Rex’s face. Immediately, Skywalker starts to grumble. The benches are designed for clones, since all the technicians who will make use of them are clones.  
He's a head taller than Rex, and next to the bench he looks ridiculous. 

Rex bites the inside of his mouth to try and contain his laughter, and focuses on his helmet. He finishes prying out the visor and leans in, close to the light, to try and see if he can salvage it or if he needs to cave in, to give in and use one of the shitty new Phase II models.   
Some of the connections look a bit suspect, but it’ll hold. Rex lets out a breath, and puts it back in its place. He’ll need to reconnect some of the wires before welding it back together.  
It won’t be pretty, but it’ll work, and what’s more: it’ll be his. He knows nobody else in the karking Grand Army of the Republic has a bucket like his. 

At his side, Skywalker has set something on the bench as well. He turns on the lights on his side, and they shine off something bone white. Rex sees it from the corner of his eye, blinks, concentration broken, and glances to the right.  
He feels his heart skip a beat. 

He didn’t know Skywalker had kept the lightsabers.

In retrospect, it makes sense. It also makes sense that they are there, and not back on Coruscant, on the _shabla_ Temple. They are beautiful, well-crafted and elegant. The casing on the shoto --and he remembers the commander explaining the difference to him when she first came back with her second lightsaber from Ilum, excited and oh so proud of herself-- looks slightly newer, the metal cleaner, not as scratched.   
Rex knows Skywalker has noticed he’s looking, but he’s clearly ignoring him. He’s just glaring down at the ‘sabers, his hands on the bench, long fingers and black leather clenching and unclenching. He really must be cold--the nails in his flesh hand are almost blue.   
“She left them in our- in my rooms,” he explains suddenly. He sounds hoarse, and he clears his throat. “She left most of her things.”  
It’s been almost six months. Suddenly, Rex can’t remember if he gave the order to empty her cabin, if anyone did. He’s not looked inside. He never stepped inside while she was with them, and now it’d feel… it’d feel wrong. 

“She will come back,” Skywalker says. He clears his throat again. He’s scowling. “She will.”

Rex looks down. His half-fixed bucket looks back at him, and he searches for something to say; he comes up empty. 

She didn’t even leave him with a comm number, or anything. She just walked out. In a way, he understands--she felt betrayed. He understands the need for a clear cut, he can’t really fault her from cutting them all so completely and so perfectly from her new life.   
But it still hurts. He misses her--he thought he was her friend. He always tried to treat her with the respect he owed her due to her position, to her rank, but he thought she knew he also saw her as a friend. As a comrade, as a partner.   
Maybe she didn’t; or maybe she did, and just didn’t care.   
“If you say so, sir,” he finally answers. He opens his mouth and then closes it again. At his side, he feels Skywalker tense up.  
“General Kenobi doesn’t think so,” he answers, biting and bitter and ugly. “He says…”   
He trails off.

Rex can’t say he minds. For whatever reason, he lately can’t find it in himself to care about what the fuck General Kenobi thinks about Ahsoka Tano.   
He is getting angry--he breathes in, out. Reminds himself it’s not his place.

“You know her better, sir,” he replies.   
It’s the right thing to say because Skywalker breathes out and relaxes his shoulders. He nudges Rex, his shoulder against his head, and Rex gives in and rolls his eyes, pushes him back.   
“Yes I do,” Skywalker says. He looks down at the lightsabers, a rueful smile on his face.  
“Are they… malfunctioning? Sir?” Rex asks, awkward. He doesn’t know he is overstepping some kind of invisible boundary; sometimes it’s hard to tell, with General Skywalker.  
Skywalker shakes his head, still smiling. He trails the fingers of his flesh hand over the durasteel.  
“No. Well,” he corrects himself, “not yet. But I want to make sure they stay that way.”  
“It’s what she would want,” Rex says, and Skywalker rubs his face, suddenly awkward, almost guilty.  
“Yes, well. I sure hope so,” he replies. He opens his mouth and closes it, once, twice, searching for the right words. “It’s not really… done. Messing with another person’s lightsabers. I guess. At least, not without asking first. Even if they are your padawan- your former padawan’s.”

Rex’s first impulse is to tell him that, in that case, maybe he should leave them the hell alone, but he kills it. It’s not what Skywalker wants, or needs, to hear. 

“Well, if it’s to keep them in good form, sir,” he says, and he can hear the Cody that lives in the back of his head telling him to stop doing this, to stop giving Skywalker outs and enabling him and lending him a hand when what he should do is disengage. But he looks so… sad. Rex doesn’t have it in him.   
“Yeah, Rex,” Skywalker says. He sighs, and falls silent. Rex turns back to his bucket and begins to reconnect the wires with careful fingers. He feels Skywalker’s eyes on his head, but he ignores him, gives him his space.  
“What happened to your bucket?” he suddenly asks. “I know you don’t like the new Phase IIs.”  
Rex smiles down, still welding wires together. “Yes. It was just a knock. It messed with some of the connections, but it’s nothing serious.”  
Skywalker hums. He leans down on his elbows, looks at Rex from under his hair. It’s getting too long--he’s starting to look ridiculous.  
“I could fix it for you,” he suddenly says, and Rex doesn’t sigh, he doesn’t jump, but he’s shocked, and he should not be--he should have seen this coming.  
Part of him can’t help but feel--honoured, that’s the word. Because he knows Skywalker likes messing around with electronics, but he’s still his superior officer, his Jedi, and very probably the best engineer in the GAR as well.

At the same time, he isn’t sure he likes somebody else, someone that’s not him, messing with his bucket. It’s not his face, not really, but it’s _his_. The paint design, the tally marks, even the awful welding marks--he’s had a hand in all those things. They are _his_.

When he glances at Skywalker, he finds that his general is already looking at him. He looks… calm. Exhausted and grieving, yes, but he’s not vibrating out of his skin. He just wants to help.

Rex sighs. 

“It’s pretty much done,” he says, but he passes the bucket to Skywalker anyway. His general takes it from him with careful hands. “I just need to finish- “  
“Yes, I see,” Skywalker interrupts him. Rex shuts his mouth. 

He watches, his back to the bench and his arms crossed, while the general finishes fixing his bucket. He makes it look so easy. It’s like he instinctively knows where everything else, every tool, every wire--he gets it done in minutes.

“How does it look, Rex?” he asks. He sets down the welder and turns to look at Rex, his bucket on his hands.   
He knows it looks perfect, but he wants reassurance anyways. Rex sighs, doesn’t roll his eyes, and smiles.  
“Just fine, General. Thank you.”


End file.
